Holmes: The serious side of marijuana

Sunday

Mar 30, 2014 at 12:45 AMApr 1, 2014 at 11:23 PM

By Rick HolmesOpinion editor

When legal marijuana comes to Massachusetts, you won’t find it in a psychedelic emporium down on Main Street.In Milford, at least - if all works out - you’ll find marijuana deep in an industrial park, in a blue metal warehouse building, with a high-tech growing operation in the back and a dispensary in the front. Nearby, you’ll pass companies like SeraCare Life Sciences, a rehabilitation hospital satellite branch and the headquarters of Waters Corporation, which makes sophisticated analytical instruments used in laboratories around the world.The location is important, because Massachusetts is poised to underline the medical in medical marijuana.But there’s no sign of activity in the blue metal building now, and whether it will all work out is yet to be determined. Milford Medicinals – known as Bay State Relief until a few weeks ago – is one of 20 applicants to make it to the verification stage in the approval process run by the state Department of Public Health.It’s been a messy process, with lots of grumbling from those cut out of what promises to be a lucrative business. Nearly 200 non-profits, mostly created for this purpose, started the race, with 100 making it to phase 2, which came with a $30,000 fee, a long application and extensive background checks on each firm’s principal players.The applications were scored by an outside firm, then reviewed by a selection committee which picked the 20 operations in line for provisional permits (another eight were invited to apply for a different location). The applications and score totals have been posted online, providing ammunition for those dissatisfied by the results. But the selection committee’s detailed score sheets haven’t yet been released, making it easier for people to speculate about favoritism.The lawsuits have already begun. One, filed by a group that had hoped to open a dispensary in Framingham, had a court hearing this week. It charges a more successful applicant – led by former Congressman Bill Delahunt – with using inorganic perlite in its cultivation plan, and another with misstating anticipated sales tax receipts. There have been complaints that experience cultivating marijuana wasn’t given enough weight, that problems people connected to applications have had in other states should have eliminated them, that statements of local support were exaggerated."This is a high stakes, highly competitive process," Karen van Unen, director of the DPH marijuana program told me. "People are going to be disappointed."The DPH will soon release more information, she said, that should defuse some of the criticism. Nothing is final yet, and there’s still time to get it right, and new reports indicate there may be another round of background checks. The summer target date for opening dispensaries is now more like late summer, and it takes four months to grow a crop, so it may be the end of the year before the first customer can buy the first bud.While most of the calls to go back and start the process all over again have come from unsuccessful applicants, there’s been grumbling as well from politicians and commentators who didn’t like the idea of legalizing medical marijuana from the beginning.For those who stand to profit – especially if, as many expect, voters legalize recreational marijuana in a 2016 referendum, giving the successful medical marijuana applicants a head start – this dance is compelling. But it’s ultimately not what’s important.What’s important is that hundreds of people with serious medical issues will soon be able to get the medication they need. That includes people with severe pain, like the accident victim I interviewed before the 2012 referendum. The doctors could only prescribe highly addictive opiates like OxyContin, she said, which left her drowsy and unable to function. Marijuana was a life-saver, allowing her to keep a clear head and work, she said.With Massachusetts in the middle of a heroin epidemic tied to abuse of prescription opiates, people need alternatives to addictive painkillers. And some research indicates medical marijuana can be useful in treating addiction itself.What’s important are the children suffering from seizure disorders who are seeing their symptoms disappear when treated with marijuana strains that have been stripped of their intoxicating properties.Weed that heals people, but doesn’t get them high? Yes. Marijuana has 80 to 100 differerent cannabinoids that work in different combinations to produce different effects. Because federal prohibition has for decades made it nearly impossible for scientists to obtain it for research, they’ve barely begun to understand how the plant works.Not far from the Milford dispensary is a new company that will be part of the process of transforming marijuana from a party drug to serious medicine. One of the founders of ProVerde and its chief scientific officer, Christopher Hudella, spent 14 years at Waters Corporation. ProVerde is using "UltraPerformance" convergence chromatography technology developed at Waters to analyze the potency and components of medical marijuana.Michael Dundis, spokesman for Milford Medicinals, told me his company is looking forward to working with ProVerde, and with other companies in the state’s booming life sciences industry. There are still barriers to research on marijuana, he said. Dispensaries can do research in-house on strains and purity, but they are only allowed to sell to patients, not outsiders. But if they can figure out ways to legally partner with scientists, research hospitals, universities or pharmaceutical companies, they may be able to unlock more healing properties in this complicated plant.Colorado, Washington and other states that have moved more quickly toward legalization have a head start, but Massachusetts is well-positioned to become a leader in this new field.The good news is we are starting to shed the legal prohibition, cultural baggage and drug-war politics that have kept cannabis’ medical properties in the shadows. It’s time people dropped the Cheech and Chong jokes and started taking medical marijuana seriously.Rick Holmes, opinion editor for the Daily News, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@wickedlocal.com.